Data Acquisition Board.

A flexible data acquisition platform has been developed for use in RHIC beam instrumentation systems. By incorporating a floating point digital signal processor (DSP) and standard input/output modules, this system can acquire and process data from a variety of beam diagnostic devices. The DSP performs real time corrections, filtering, and data buffering to greatly reduce control system computation and bandwidth requirements. Applications in several instrumentation systems currently under construction will also be presented.

SoftCal data acquisition boards can be calibrated by executing a software routine within the host CPU. This is possible because the data acquisition board has onboard programmable digital-to-analog converters or digital potentiometers instead of manual potentiometers and onboard high-precision references. The data acquisition board is initiated by loading pre-defined factory hardware settings, which are typically stored onboard. The user has the ability through a host-side routine to recalibrate the board as necessary.

A data acquisition board designed for high performance will work in a very wide range of test and measurement and control applications. Combined with powerful software, a data acquisition board will turn a personal computer into a powerful measurement system that may be used to automate experiments, construct product test stands, monitor and control production equipment, or be embedded in products ranging from medical monitoring systems to automobile test simulators.

The fluorescence signal is amplified by PMTs and collected by a fast A/D board. A typical scan takes about 15 minutes and collects about 14 million pixels of 16-bit data for each channel. The software driving the xy-scan motion control and the data acquisition board is written in Labview by National Instruments Corp After data averaging and compression, the data files for each channel are about 1 Mbyte large, at the 16-bit resolution. The data files are compatible with and are readily analysed by AIS imaging software as well as NIH Image. A dynamic range of 1000:1 is easily obtained. This value is limited by background 'biochemical' noise, inherent in the present protocol for slide preparation.

Buried Utility Detection System (BUDS) is a real-time that provides output to the machine operator as he/she digs. It is active detection system that generates and transmits its own magnetic fields and detect the coupling effect with any buried utility line within its detection range. A magnetic field is generated through the transmitter module and metal detector coil. Its impact on any metal object in its detection range will be coupled and picked up by the receiver module of the detector. The control unit processes the signals from the search coil. The data acquisition board is connected to an analog output port of the control unit via a simple cable.

HardCal data acquisition boards are SoftCal data acquisition boards with a processing unit residing on the data acquisition board. The calibration process is self-contained on the data acquisition board without the need of any special host-side software algorithm. The data acquisition boards can be recalibrated at will by the user or be set to recalibrate based on information received by a sensor such as a digital temperature sensor.

Once, setting up a PC-based data acquisition system was very difficult. Hardware and software were primitive, so installation and configuration required setting jumpers and DIP switches, allocating operating system resources, changing config.sys settings, changing IRQ levels, writing software drivers, and performing hardware calibration.

What helps makes this board a versatile data acquisition board is its use of a mezzanine cards known as Industry Pack Modules. Up to four of these Industry Pack Modules may be installed on the DSP board while still occupying only one VME slot.

The onboard controller is a distributed hierarchical system comprising a PC-based computer, a data-acquisition board and eight three-axis control boards based on the LM629 microcontrollers, interconnected through an ISA bus. The LM629 microcontrollers include digital PID filters provided with a trajectory generator used to execute closed-loop control for position and velocity in each joint. Every microcontroller commands a DC motor-joint driver based on the PWM technique. An analog data-acquisition board is used to acquire sensorial data from the range of external equipment (sensors, locators, etc.). A radio Ethernet card is provided for network communication with the operator station. Additional electronic cards for interfacing with the detector are also provided, as well as communication with the DGPS systems via RS232.

The number of digitizer channels serviced by a single DSP board depends on the digitizing rate and the complexity of the signal processing algorithm. Examples are summarized in Table 1. The Injection position monitor system is in production and will be commissioned beam in late 1995. A prototype of the collider ring position monitor module has been tested but production will not begin until 1997. A loss monitor module has not yet been constructed. The two variations of position monitor systems will be described. These two systems share the same sampling detector design, but use different digitizers, different timing system interfaces, and run different DSP software. Nevertheless, the results are presented to the control system in identical data structures. In fact, these data structures are similar to those of the RHIC control system?

The 16-channel DAP 5400a/626 data-acquisition board is equipped with eight analog-to-digital converters that sample simultaneously with 14-bit resolution at 1.25 Msamples/s each, for an aggregate throughput of 10 Msamples/s. Each board samples its 16 analog inputs in two groups of eight, with all eight inputs in each group sampled simultaneously. For applications requiring more channels, as many as five DAP boards can be synchronized to provide 40 simultaneous channels, a throughput of 50 Msamples/s, and onboard memory of 640 Mbytes. The DAP 5400a/626 comes with DAPL 2000, a multitasking real-time operating system for PC-based data acquisition and control.

The output from the PMT is sent to a data acquisition board, which converts the analog electric signal to a digital signal. The digital output from the data acquisition board is input to a microcomputer. The microcomputer processes the data by taking the Fourier transform of the detected signal, s(t). In the frequency domain, Eq.

Choosing the right hardware and software is very important when setting up or upgrading an automatic controls lab. National Instruments LabVIEW can be used with a variety of hardware options for creating a real-time control system. Three control system hardware options are outlined for controlling plants, such as the ECP mechanical plants.

You know what happens when a cable from a sensitive data acquisition board is routed into another cabinet, or another part of the building - the input and output wiring terminals are grouped among hundreds of other terminals carrying diverse signals and levels: DC signals, AC signals, milli-voltage, thermocouples, DC power, AC power, proximity switches, relay circuits, etc. It's not difficult to imagine even a well trained technician or electrician connecting a wire to the wrong terminal. Wiring diagrams are often updated in real time with a red pen, as system needs change. Equipment gets replaced with "equivalents". Sometimes power supplies fail and excess voltages are applied inadvertently. What can you do to protect your measurement system?

The front-end implementation mainly consists of making the data collected by the data acquisition board appear in a parameter page. To do so, a variety of methods were suggested.

Computer-based plug-in data acquisition board technology has advanced dramatically during the past 15 years to continually improve real-time performance. For example, in early data acquisition board designs, the host computer had to physically access the board and retrieve the data points for samples to be taken. As a result, sampling a signal at 100 kHz required the host computer to access the board 100,000 times a second. To prevent a loss of data with these early boards, expensive multiprocessor computers running specialized RTOSs were used.

The Ultra 530.LPCI adapter from Sealevel Systems is a serial PCI interface with a single port. The low-profile adapter supports standard PC data rates and has a top speed of 921.6 kbits/s. A 128-byte FIFO buffer allows datacom applications to run error-free.

In the physical chemistry laboratory it is common to confront situations that require the acquisition of large amounts of experimental data from multiple sources (channels). An overview schematic of the computer data acquisition system is shown in the following figure; currently, a PC with an IEEE-488 data acquisition board is being used as the data acquisition computer.

One ultra high-speed data acquisition board for radar, ultrasonic, seismic, and related applications acquires data at sample rates up to 500 million samples/sec. Using interleave techniques, rates of up to 1 billion samples/second may be achieved. Boards are available for PC and VME-based systems.

The PCI-7831R intelligent data acquisition board is connected to the PC through the PCI bus. Control loops can be executed on both the Real-Time OS running on the PCI and in the RIO intelligent data acquisition board. The ECP-RIO Adapter cable connects the 68pin VHDCI connector from the MIO connector on the PXI-7831R to the round encoder cable connected directly to the ECP plant. The banana plugs connect to the motor drive inputs on the front of the ECP Power supply. The ECP Amplifier is then connected to one of ECP's mechanical plants.